The stereotypical example is that a bunch of people are invited to a dinner in a wealthy man's house, and the wealthy man is poisoned while they are all eating dinner. All the guests debate who among them is the killer, only to discover at the end of the story that the killer is the butler, whom nobody bothered to think twice about; he's just part of the furniture, as if the table was the culprit.

The butler is the avatar of the most unlikely suspect that turns out to be guilty because the author wasn't creative enough to come up with a better way to surprise the reader. It's the mystery writer equivalent of the Asspull, except that you can see it coming a mile away, making it, for modern readers, The Untwist. Ironically, because this trope is so well known, when an actual butler is involved he rarely "did it", or, when he did, it's often a parody and Played for Laughs.

The expression "The butler did it" was probably coined by novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart, although it's likely to be a real-world example of Beam Me Up, Scotty!. The earliest verified explicit statement of disapproval dates to S.S. Van Dine's 1928 essay "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories" (it might be noted that these rules would disqualify the authors who defined the genre, including Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allan Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle - indeed, rule 20 says that a good mystery should not include certain types of clues that Doyle introduced into the mystery genre on the grounds that they were now overused, and would more accurately be titled "20 Rules for Writing a Fair Play Mystery"). This article explores in detail the origin of this strange semi-existent trope. It's possibly related to the Real Life stereotype that, if something goes missing in a home, the hired help likely stole it.

Straight examples

Anime & Manga

In the Black Butler anime, in almost every other arc this is the case, in the cases Ciel has to solve, it was the butler other than Sebastian that "did it". First it's Grell in the Jack the Ripper arc, then there's no butler, then it's Agni, then it's Angela/Ash at the end of the first season.

And in the second season, Ciel's tricked into thinking that Sebastian himself "did it". The one who did the tricking? Another butler.

In the murder mystery arc of the manga, not only was much of the misleading investigation orchestrated by Sebastian, but the true murderer was the Queen's butler, Charles Grey.

In a filler case, the father of a pianist Driven to Suicide by a rich Jerk Ass invokes the trope when he gets a work as the butler of the old man and uses this to murder him in his birthday party. He also was planning to kill the old man's daughter who was the son's girlfriend, but due to a miscalculation he fails... and it was a good thing, as the girl still loved the son and had become a Broken Bird after his death.

Another episode involved a butler kidnapping a little girl named Akiko. However, it turns out that he was doing it for noble reasons and with Akiko's permission, since her father was a Workaholic and shewanted his attention. Unfortunately, Akiko was kidnapped again, this time by a genuine criminal. After she's rescued, the dad forgives both butler and daughter and grants Akiko her wish, as they go into a vacation together.

In One Piece, Merry the butler survived an assassination attempt on his life. The OTHER butler did it- Klahadore. Real name, the infamous CAPTAIN KURO. Also, Kaya's parents died shortly after he enrolled as a butler...

Kuro states to his partner-in-crime/right-hand-man Jango - which he would have no reason to lie to - that Kaya's parents died naturally, so they probably did. Though he probably would have killed them himself if they had lived on for much longer...

In Hellsing, if Sir Islands' suspicions are anything to go by, Walter Dornez - the Hellsing family's butler - had been working for Millennium way before he officially turned, and was responsible for the security breaches that enabled the Valentine brothers to get into the mansion and massacre most of Hellsing's staff. It's also just a tad convenient that he gives Alucard a gun which is later destroyed by the Doktor via remote control.

The stinking rich Saiki clan has a butler named Katou and a housekeeper/cook named Ohatsu. Katou didn't do many things but was responsible for driving someone else to do them. Until the end, where he snaps and stabs one of the main characters. And Ohatsu did not do anything... But can't forgive herself for not doing what she should have done.

Additionally, the Saikis are known in Tokyo for employing highschool and college-aged young men as a mix of boarding students and servants, sponsoring their education in exchange for their housework. Two of them are vital to the story: the protagonist Masataka (who gets pretty screwed up but isn't a criminal) and the Yandere/Mad DoctorKatsuragi (who is a Domestic Abuser, rapist and murderer, and commited some of his worst crimes when he still was a butler)

In Rick Veitch's Brat Pack, Big Bad Doctor Blasphemy, responsible for the deaths of... the entire cast, is revealed to be King Rad's butler Fredo in the final pages.

Played with by Diabolik: the actual butler is always innocent, but Diabolik tend to take his place (or the place of another house servant) to take a look of the place he's about to steal from and/or drug/kidnap his victim.

In Trinity War, the Outsider's true identity is Earth-3 Alfred Pennyworth who has been working for years to bring his master Owlman and the rest of Earth 3's Crime Syndicate to Prime Earth. This is given a prompt Lampshade Hanging.

The Outsider: All this time you were looking for who was behind this... as you say on your world... the butler did it.

In Jannah Station, this is one of the possible outcomes, depending on the reader's point of view

Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?. In "The Gentleman's Gentleman's Tale", Alfred claims to be the Joker, having created the Rogues Gallery with the help of actors he knew from his stage days before he became a butler, in order to keep Bruce Wayne diverted from his personal demons. The story opens with this trope being given in a murder mystery play.

In Frank Tieri's run of Batman and the Outsiders, The Riddler, investigating a rich man's murder, declares the butler the killer by directly quoting this trope, calling it "the greatest cliché of all".

Films — Animated

This is what sets the plot of The Aristocats in motion, pretty much. Butler Edgar is second in line for the fortune his wealthy mistress wants to leave to her cats, and so knocks them out with sleeping pills and tries to get rid of them. This being Disney, the kitties live, and then have wacky adventures before Edgar's comeuppance is delivered. Also played within that the audience (but not the characters) knows it's Edgar right off the bat.

Funnily enough, one of the characters even lampshades the trope, when Edgar's intentions are revealed:

(Panting) Duchess—kittens—in trouble! Butler did it....

Lawrence from The Princess and the Frog is a lesser villain, but still needs mentioning; He was Prince Naveen's valet on his visit to New Orleans before he became an accessory to Dr. Facilier's plot to feed all the souls in New Orleans to his friends on the Other Side by being magically disguised as the Prince (the real thing being transformed into a frog).It's a Long Story.

Clue only plays this straight in a fourth ending that was filmed but never used. Two endings are aversions and the third is a subversion, as detailed further down.

No murders involved, but Fitzwilly takes this trope Up to Eleven by starring a butler who's a Con Man criminal mastermind. Subverted in that all the other domestic servants in the household also Did It.

In Where the Truth Lies, Lanny believes Vince killed the girl and Vince thinks Lanny is the murderer. It turns out the butler strangled her. The reveal hurt the movie; as one critics noted the ending was "straight out of the big book of mystery clichés".

Gosford Park where a valet/butler tries to kill a wealthy aristocrat, but the housekeeper beats him to it!

Moe even lampshades it in the short "Who Done It", where the stooges are detectives. As soon as they get into the house they search the butler, Moe saying "The butler is always a suspect!" As it turns out, the butler was one of the four people behind the crime.

Becomes one of the theories/rotating contradictory solutions in Murder by Death, a parody pastiche of classic murder mystery tropes, and is appropriately lampshaded.

Bensonmum: Tell me, as the only survivor, how did you deduce it was me?

Sidney Wang: Went back to theory seldom used today: Butler did it.

Double subverted in Ninotchka. The butler seemed suspicious from the beginning. Then the jewelry is gone and the male lead becomes the prime suspect, but it turns out it was indeed the butler.

Played totally straight in Bradleys Summer, where the leader of the terrorist plot is the butler in the house where Bradley is staying for the summer.

While they were never so common as popular belief holds them to be, they're not entirely nonexistent. In Herbert Jenkins' The Strange Case of Mr. Challoner (1921) and in Mary Roberts Rinehart's own The Door (1930), the butler indeed does it.

The butler did it in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Musgrave Ritual", although in that case it's only theft, not murder, and not the mystery; the question is why he did it, and what happened to him afterwards. It eventually transpires that he's dead, possibly at the hands of his accomplice. The maid did it (or at least let it happen).

In The Hound of the Baskervilles, suspicion initially settles on the butler John Barrymore and his wife Elisa, but both are later shown to be innocent. What they are guilty of, however, is giving shelter and supplies to a fugitive — who turns out to be Elisa's younger brother Selden, a local Serial Killer.

Agatha Christie used variants of this a couple of times; in Sparkling Cyanide, the waiter did it, while in Death in the Clouds, the air steward did it. However, in both cases, this was one of the regular suspects disguised as a server.

In Three Act Tragedy, the butler is the prime suspect, having disappeared soon after the murder. Turns out he did it, but he was one of the other suspects in disguise.

Black Coffee, originally written as a play, has this ending. In the book adaptation, not by Christie, it's spoiled the moment it happens by outright stating, before the detectives even arrive, that the character placed the poison into the victim's coffee cup before giving it to him.

One of Christie's short stories, The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman also employs this trope, except that in this case the "Butler" is actually a valet.

Subverted in And Then There Were None. The butler, Mr. Rogers, and his wife Ethel are two of the suspects, but are two of the first victims. They're guilty of something else, though (killing their former boss, a rich and sickly spinster whose meds they tampered with so they could inherit her estate), and that is why they got killed. (Ethel dies first and in her sleep since her husband pressured her into helping kill their old employer; Rogers is killed in a far more bloody manner awhile later)

Raymond Chandler, in his short story "Trouble Is My Business", has the butler do it. An interesting spin on this trope, as Chandler has John Dalmas (changed to Philip Marlowe in some reprintings) and the butler share drinks and a laugh over being the only "average joes" involved in the case. Of course, that's over when Dalmas figures everything out.

In The Dresden Files, it's not exactly the Butler, but has the Beneath Suspicion slot down pat: the traitor on the White Council isn't the Jerkass leader, the mysterious Asian, the noble Native American shaman, the Captain of the Wardens, OR Harry's Jerkass parole officer Morgan - it's Samuel Peabody, the secretary.

Russell: (affronted) Are you telling me the butler did it? Holmes: I'm afraid it does happen.

A subtle version of this in the Fighting Fantasy gamebook House of Hell. The butler, Franklins, was the demon the cult was worshipping right under his master, the cult leader's, nose, and the Final Boss of the story.

In a rare nonfiction book example, Richard Dawkins uses this trope for a series of thought experiments in his popular science book The Greatest Show on Earth.

In Asimov's Black Widowers series of Phone-In Detective stories, six men meet once a month at a restaurant for dinner and conversation. Somehow, they always end up solving a mystery — or, rather, their waiter Henry points out the solution after the others try to solve it and fail. In the first story of the series, Henry turns out to be the one who "did it," although the mystery is not so much "who done it" as "what, exactly, did he do?" Henry is happy to provide the answer, since what he did was not in any way illegal.

The original book version of Roots has a horrible deconstruction of this trope: the white plantocracy needed black house slaves, and therefore surrounded themselves with black butlers, maids and cooks, many of whom had excellent motives for murder. The book recounts how some black nursemaids would stab a pin into the brain of a white baby through the soft spot before the skull bones knitted, leaving the baby in a coma with no visible mark.

In Rebecca Lickiss's Eccentric Circles, Malraux says it's the butler or husband; Aelverim counters that Grandma was a widow and had no butler — and Piper adds anyways, it's the boyfriend nowadays, which display of Genre Savvy makes them conclude she'll do.

Played straight (but played with on a meta level) at the end of the story "The Horror Writers Halloween Ball" in Armageddon Outta Here. In an aside, it is mentioned that Gordon Edgley, together with Skulduggery, solved the case of the phantom killer of Darkenholme House."But that's...another story. ... (paragraph) ... Which is rather uninteresting. The butler did it."

Live Action Television

One Jonathan Creek Christmas special actually used this, though, as usual for the series, half of the mystery was realising that it had been a murder in the first place, and then how and why it had been done. The victim was a magician who had apparently killed herself, but it ultimately — and appropriately — turned out that The Butler Did It. How? It was all done with mirrors.

This is used in the Bones episode "Yanks in the UK", possibly just to use the line. On the other hand, it's arguably a subversion or deconstruction: The butler's confession conveniently stops the investigation and spares his employer's family the public scrutiny of a trial; he says he did it to protect the family's reputation, the family promises to provide him with the "finest legal representation", none of the cops present look convinced, and it's unclear if he in fact "did it".

On one episode of The Twilight Zone, a group of people get off a bus and gather at a cafe where they are served food and drinks by the local counter jerk and dine. It is later revealed by the police that one of the people on the bus seems to have been an alien. Ten Little Murder Victims ensues, the resolution of which is only a half-subversion of The Butler Did It: one of the people from the bus was The Mole, but the cafe worker who served them all and remained very much in the background throughout the story was also an enemy alien from a different planet, and was two steps ahead of The Mole the whole time.

Boardwalk Empire: Parlor maid/servant Louanne is the one poisoning the Commodore.

Happens in Lewis and its predecessor Inspector Morse occasionally, like in "Wild Justice". Never trust a college servant.

Got a Lampshade Hanging in the Morse episode "Happy Families", with the murder of a wealthy industrialist in a mansion with a large family:

Morse: Is there a butler?

Lewis: Didn't see one, no.

Morse: Pity, that might have saved us a lot of time.

The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries episode "Dangerous Waters" plays with this: the kidnap victim doesn't recognize her mother's butler when he greets the Hardys at the door. Naturally, he turns out to be part of the plot, and the non-recognition turns into a vital clue for Joe & Frank to crack the case.

Castle, after teasing a couple of times, finally gives us a straight example in "Secret's Safe With Me", finally allowing Castle to say the phrase and have it be true.

Square One TV features this in a Mathnet series when George Frankly invites Pat Tuesday to join him at a mystery weekend in a mansion. Unfortunately, due to a road sign pointing the wrong direction due to a storm, they end up at a different mansion where six criminals have been invited to another party - they only show up because the invitations were to their real names instead of their assumed names they'd been living as for years. Over the week's episodes, they start disappearing one by one. When they all disappear, George finds a series of hidden passageways leading to a holding cell where they're being held by the butler. It turns out the butler was a court stenographer upset that these 'criminals' never went to jail, despite the fact that they've all proven their innocence with math. (For example, one man was exonerated from stealing gold when he pointed out that to commit the crime, he would have had to carry hundreds of pounds of gold by himself.) When he was exposed and went to jail, he learned to like math, taught it to others, and became an advisor to Square One TV.

In one episode of Psych a rockstar that Shawn and Gus had gotten busted for manslaughter once invited them to his mansion and some of the other guests got killed. It was his butler, who had written his boss's songs and was mad at not being credited for them, and had also killed the woman that got the rocker sent to prison.

The Flemish series Buiten De Zone had a Hercule Poirot parody where the detective went on a long recap of the facts of the murder to a room of suspects, and ended up accusing the butler even even though with each thing he said one of the people in the room started acting increasingly nervous, going as far as pulling out the murder weapon and miserably failing at discreetly disposing it.

In Soap, after Peter Campbell is murdered, one of the reasons Benson is a suspect (besides being black) is because he's the butler. "In cases like this, it's the butler who did it. In fact, that's how we got the phrase 'the butler did it'."

Played with in the Ripping Yarns episode "Murder at Moorstones Manor". The butler claims he did it, but so do four other people. The resulting gunfight leaves them all dead, so we don't know if he did it or not.

In All That, Detective Dan skit has a butler stealing in the background while the detective tries to find the culprit.

In the Doctor Who story "The Robots of Death" - with its plot structure and art-deco set design implying 1930s murder mysteries - the crew refuse to believe a service robot could possibly be behind the murders, as they are blinded by their lifestyle from noticing how ubiquitous robots are. Since they're robots, the fact that they're Three-Laws Compliant is a justification.

Music

Used in the Tool song "Sober". "Waiting like a stalking butler / who upon the finger rests"

In Reinhard Mey's song "Der Mörder ist immer der Gärtner"note The murderer is always the gardener, which is the GermanTrope Codifier, it was supposedly the gardener who did it (the killer is never actually described, only his deeds, but in full keeping with the trope the refrain insists it must've been him) ...until the last verse in which the gardener is himself killed - in some versions, ironically enough, by the butler.

Pinball

Since the killer for each case in WHO dunnit is randomly selected, it is possible for the game to play this straight when Butler is the culprit.

Tabletop Games

It's possible for this to be the case in the game Clue, if Mrs. White is the randomly selected murderer.

In the setting of the role-playing game Over the Edge there is a Milkman Conspiracy of butlers and personal retainers around the world. They usually don't murder their patrons, but if there was a good reason...

In the card game Gloom, the description for Butterfield ("the lurking butler") is "Whatever it is, he did it." Another card is "..Was Betrayed by the Butler", with the flavor text "Like you're surprised."

Theatre

Non-murder example, despite the deaths. In Blithe Spirit, the un-noticed person whose presence and personality is pulling back the dead spirit of the previous wife is the timid housemaid.

Video Games

Carltron, Professor Ruffleberg's robotic butler from Secret of Evermore, is revealed to have been the one behind his disappearance, and also those of several of his contacts.

Early hints in the first episode of Covert Front hint at the butler, Manfred, having done something to his master. At the bequest of his superiors in the Imperial hierarchy, as it turns out.

In a non-mystery example, in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, both Mao and the player are lead to believe that Mao's Dad is the game's Big Bad. However, it turns out that Super Hero Aurum in the guise of Mao's butler Geoffrey is the game's actual Big Bad.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies features a kindly old butler named Crivens who helps you out for the majority of the game. When the final boss battle comes about, Crivens rushes in and seems to have things well under control after beating the boss for you. It is then revealed that Crivens staged the entire fight and is in fact was the final boss the entire time.

"Foolish boy! Did you like my little disguise? Bet you never guessed that the butler did it?!"

Not a murder, but at one point in Memoria, one of the protagonists is in a tavern trying to find the last remaining unaccounted-for member of a mob from the previous night. He's told that everyone currently in the room was also there last night (and is therefore a potential candidate). After he interrogates the three suspicious men in the bar, it turns out that the fifth member of the mob was the barmaid.

In Umineko: When They Cry, although the "butlers" are more like servants, this is what Eva suspects during the first arc. During the second arc, Kanon goes missing after he and Jessica are killed in another 'closed room murder', and as he has a master key, Rosa comes to the conclusion that either Kanon (who had disappeared), Gohda or Kumasawa (neither of whom had an alibi) killed Jessica, as they were the only ones who could have locked the door to Jessica's room.

Rosa goes even further after locking all the servants out with apologies and excuses about their possible suspicion. After they're thrown out, she openly confides to Battler that she doesn't have any doubt that they're all responsible.

She's right.

Western Animation

Hurricanes episode "The Curse of the Gorgon" had the Hispanola Hurricanes seemingly turned into stone by the legendary Medusa. It turns out they had just been replaced by statues and a butler working for the Hurricanes' host had been bribed into helping.

Snerdly in Top Cat's movie Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats is the main villain of the story. He is unable to kill someone (it is a kid's movie) but certainly tries.

Fred Flintstone has to deal with a murderous butler when he inherits a property in one episode of The Flintstones.

Episode "The Balooest of the Bluebloods" of TaleSpin has Baloo inheriting the title of Baron and the fortune that comes with it, only to learn later that there's a curse killing his relatives. It turns out there's no curse, the butler and the maid are the ones killing the barons in order to enjoy the mansion themselves.

Real Life

Not a butler but a valet. The legendary spy Cicero at the British embassy in World War II.

William Marsh Rice was poisoned by his butler in a conspiracy involving one of his attorneys and a fake will. The mystery was solved by another of his attorneys, and his university endowment was restored.

The whole trope came into being from the fact that in Victorian England serving staff were more often than not underpaid, overworked and typically disgruntled. Occasional murders of employers thus weren't unheard of. There is a record of a valet who had memorised his master's schedule to the last detail and once brought him his pillow just before he had intended to ask for it. The master, angry at his presumptuous servant, sent him away and called him immediately back to bring him the pillow. The valet shot him.

According to tradition, ninja performed assassinations under the guise of household servants. But if actual common household servants had murdered their lords, reporting such a thing would expose a glaring vulnerability in house security — much safer to blame someone expertly trained in such a stealth and infiltration. Makes you wonder how many ninja assassinations there really were.

On a meta-level too; the modern-day depiction of the archetypal ninja as a shadowy figure is thought to be based on the use of Kuroko, stage-hands in Kabuki theatre who are dressed all in black (or whatever the predominant background is) and although perfectly easy to see on stage they're thought to be "invisible" by cultural consensus. Some plays supposedly even had the Kuroko "coming to life" and killing one of the cast.

During the very early Meiji era (around 1865-1868), a butler from Yokohama named Shokichi led a gang that violently robbed his employer's house and killed the master's son. While the other robbers were "simply" beheaded, Shokichi himself was crucified and speared; this is because he was the servant of his victims, so he was considered the lowest of the low.

The third episode of Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, where the butler is the one who uses his master's blood as part of a demon summoning ritual. Partially subverted, in that this doesn't occur until late in the episode, we actually see the butler telling the master, and the master is eventually healed after the demon and the butler are vanquished.

In a Soul EaterBreather Episode, Excalibur tells a tale of how he helped Sherlock Holmes solve a murder in which the butler can clearly be seen twirling around a butcher's knife in the background.

But it was Watson. Excalibur said it.

In Kaori Yuki's Count Cain, a flashback chapter has the lead solving a mystery about a maid's murder. It turns out the butler didn't kill her, she died of her own greed and foolishness. He did, however, tamper the evidence to frame someone else.

Despite being mentioned above, one can call Detective Conan a "Zig-Zag" of this trope. There are a couple cases where The Butler Did It, yeah, but there about as many if not more cases where the butler clearly did not do it. Butlers, servants, nannies and housekeepers appear as characters in a lot of cases, but they are usually dismissed pretty quickly. Most commonly, a servant character appears in a case involving family drama, and is the Exposition Fairy, disclosing details about family drama that other family members don't want or can't reveal to outsiders and pesky detectives.

There's a case where a butler is one of the suspects in a murder case... but since he was disguised as another person, nobody knew he was a butler to start with. He was under a disguise as a request of his mistress Momiji, Heiji Hattori's Self-Proclaimed Love Interest, since she wanted him to keep an eye on Heiji's cases.

In Ojojojo, Gramps claims he took the missing picture from Haru's photo album, when in reality Akane took it.

Comic Books

There was a Batman story arc where Bruce Wayne was accused of murder. One background character, upon hearing the accusation, commented "He has a butler, doesn't he?".

Later in the same arc, Bruce Wayne escapes custody. The detectives in charge of the inquiry, after piecing various hints together, finally reach the conclusion that "The butler did it", after spending much of the inquiry snarking that it cannot be the butler, because the butler ''always'' does it.

Then there's "Last Rites," a two-part Batman story set during Final Crisis, with one chapter called "The Butler Did It" and the other "What the Butler Saw." It turns out that Alfred the butler is actually the Lump, a telepathic parasite hiding inside Batman's memories as he is used for clone fodder by the gods of Apokolips. It's Grant Morrison, what can we say.

In one of the first issues, when Spider-Man defeated Electro for the first time and unmasked him, he thought "If this was a movie, I would be saying 'Good Heavens! The butler!'" but admitted that he had never seen him before.

In Desolation Jones, the Colonel's butler is briefly suspected of being the mastermind behind the crime. Jones remarks "wouldn't it be funny if the butler did it." Nobody gets why he's amused.

Lampshaded in the early MAD private-eye spoof "Kane Keen," in which the detective explains that the butler is as good a suspect as everyone else is since "the butler is always the murderer." He then unmasks the butler as the true culprit: the talking dog. A cop then bursts in, breathlessly exclaiming he's figured out that the butler did it.

Made fun of in Archie Comics once. Archie's dad stays up to watch a movie called "Burglar of Barcelona" and is then called to answer a trivia question on who the burglar of Barcelona is, Kate or Harold. Since Archie's dad fell asleep during the movie and missed the conclusion, he can't answer and it turns out...the Butler did it.

In one number of Zipi y Zape the twins volunteer to solve a robbery. The first thing they do is asking if the victim has a butler. She doesn't.

Well, if you had a butler, solving this would be a lot easier.

The stereotype is mocked viciously in an Italian Disney comic starring Donald Duck's cousin Fethry and his incompetent Humphrey Bogart-esque detective friend Umperio Bogarto. When investigating a series of sabotages in a movie studio, Fethry randomly suggests without any evidence that the butler must be the culprit. Umperio points out to him that there are no butlers in the studio, causing Fethry to instead theorize that whoever the culprit is must have been a butler at some point in his past. Continuing his brilliant deduction, Fethry ends up concluding that the culprit must be ''Santa Claus's butler'', based on a single instance of Santa Claus being referred to earlier in the story. When the culprit, who is very much not a butler nor affiliated with Santa Claus in any way, is caught at the end of the story, Fethry still clings onto his nonsensical deduction and tries to convince him to get him into Santa's good graces.

In another Far Side cartoon, a detective points to the Butler as the culprit when a victim is gored to death and trampled into the floor. Just ignore the elephant in the trench coat sitting next to him...

The Aesop Brothers, a National Lampoon cartoon strip by Charles Rodrigues about (non-identical) Siamese twins, once played this as an extended fart joke. The brothers as a Holmes-and-Watson pair are retained to find out who let go a wicked one in the presence of an elderly British nobleman. You can guess the ending.

Fan Works

It Was Your Blood, Part Spoof. Lieutenant Data is called on to solve a mystery in his Sherlock Holmes persona, and starts with the usual suspects. On asking if the butler did it, he's informed that the transporter chief has an alibi.

Film

Clue (1985): In one of the endings, "Wadsworth" murdered the singing telegram girl, but then it turns out he's really Mr. Boddy; and the "it" that started the whole thing was Professor Plum murdering "Mr. Boddy" (really Mr. Boddy's butler, much to Plum's disappointment). In the lost fourth ending, he actually is the butler and murdered everyone out of a sick need for perfection, and reveals he poisoned everyone and locked the doors, then tries to escape in a police car, only to be mauled by a doberman.

In Murder by Death, when the detectives are offering their solutions, one of them claims that it was the butler who did it and then faked his own death. In the end they leave without suspecting the real killer the deaf mute cook.

A variation appeared in the film Short Circuit 2. Johnny Five notices the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. He begins speed reading through it, pauses halfway and says, "I think the chauffeur did it." He speeds through the rest of he book and, on finishing, says, "He did". Of course, as everybody knows, the murderer was the nephew of Sir Charles, and he had trained a vicious dog to murder the rest of the family in order to claim the Baskerville fortune for himself.

Gosford Park is an exploration of this trope and other murder-mystery-related tropes:

Lampshaded when one character, an American movie maker working on a new murder mystery set in England, calls his studio:

Mr. Weissman: Right, but I think it's clear it's the valet who did it. No, because the valet has access to everybody. No, the valet isn't the butler. No, there's one butler, and there's lots of valets running all over the place. He takes care of people. He's in their rooms at night. He could do it. I mean, the valet easily could have done it.

The cast is separated between "above stairs" characters (the upper-class guests of a shooting party) and "below stairs" ones (their servants). During the first part of the movie, it's revealed that every single above-stairs character has a reason to murder the future victim, but he's murdered by a below-stairs character, whose motivations are revealed in the second part of the movie. Basically, it's not "the butler did it" but "a servant did it"..

The butler acts strangely after the murder because other characters suspect he's the murderer and since he went to prison for desertion, he fears he'll be arrested even though he's innocent.

Following the trope, the lead detective who investigates the murder questions the servants, but only on their masters. Later, knowing nothing of the servants, he explains that all of them are free to leave as there's no reason to suspect them. His less classist underling does suspect the servants, but still comes up with nothing.

The 1966 comedy film The Wrong Box had a convoluted series of events centering around a dead body and cloudy circumstances of his identity and death. At film's end the entire cast is being questioned by a police detective - the butler of one household gallantly takes the fall for his master and claims to have killed him. The detective says - everyone now - "The butler did it?!"

The Haunted Mansion lampshades and plays it straight. While the butler did indeed do it Heavily implied that the butler was racist The main character immediately after invokes this trope.

Home Alone 4 subverts and averts this trope. The main character belives that the butler of his dads rich girlfriend helped two burglars (his old enemys) get into her high tech Mansion. He made quite a mess driving them away so everybody belives its just an excuse (he was about 9 years old). It turns out it was the , erm, nice housekeeper who is revealed as one of the burglar's mum.

The loyal butler Cadbury in Richie Rich was framed by the villains for the bombing of the Rich's plane to kill Richie's parents. Since Cadbury also happened to be Richie's guardian in light of Richie's parents being missing, by removing Cadbury from the picture, the villain placed himself as Richie's new guardian so he could effectively isolate Richie from the outside world.

In Dark And Stormy Knight the butler, Jeens, didn't do it, but he was obviously involved in some messy business. But "Those bodies were never found."

In Scary Movie 2, the creepy, depraved butler turns out to be in league with the evil ghost inhabitating the haunted house.

A hilarious play on this trope appears in the Czech movie Adele Hasn't Had Her Dinner Yet. In Czech, this trope is known as a phrase "The garderner is the murderer!" — a clichéd solution to pulp detective stories. What a surprise when the actual culprit of the original curious disappearance is a man who is known as "The Garderner", the most mysterious criminal mastermind of the century. And his most loyal minion is his butler/chamberlain.

In the Jeeves and Wooster story Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (Released in the U.S. as Bertie Wooster Sees it Through), when Bertie meets the author of the murder mystery he's reading, he asks him who's the killer, and he answers that it's the butler.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis plays with this trope. First it's discussed, when time-traveling main character Ned muses that the mystery they're solving is nothing like old-school detective stories, where the butler always does it. It actually becomes a Running Gag in the book, as when he travels to a Genteel Interbellum Setting, people are complaining that it's becoming cliche in stories for the butler to do it. And then in the end, it turns out the running gag is a Chekhov's Gun, and butler really did do it... but the "it" that he does is "elope with the beautiful daughter", not "murder the victim".

In the Agatha Christie novel Three-Act Tragedy, the murderer posed as his friend's butler solely in order to murder him and then fled afterwards in a deliberately suspicious manner, returning in his usual guise as the victim's good friend.

In Murder on the Orient—Express, depending on which solution you believe, the butler did indeed do it along with everyone else in the Calais Coach, including the coach attendant. Poirot and the victim are the only people in that coach who didn’t put their hands on the blade.

And the countess Andrenyi

In Black Coffee, the butler really did do it. However, since this was already a dead horse trope, you never see it coming because the butler never actually does it.

One Avram Davidson story presents a (fictional) crime writer who first used the phrase "the butler did it," and subsequently made a great deal of money off of murderous butler stories. When he stumbles into Butler Afterlife, its inhabitants are inclined to kill him for defaming their profession.

This is specifically forbidden under No.11 of Dine's Rules for writing mysteries.

A spy story written by Eric Ambler in the 1930s has an author as the main character. He gets into a conversation with a senior member of a foreign police force, who turns out to have literary ambitions of his own, but no talent: the cop's idea of a stunning resolution to the cliche-ridden murder mystery he dreams of writing is, in fact, this trope.

In Hell To Pay, John Taylor admits that he was reluctant to suspect the Griffins' butler because it's such a cliche. The butler did do it, but charging him with the crime becomes a bit beside the point when his true identity as an archdemon is exposed.

In Bruce Coville's The Ghost Wore Gray, Chris tells Nina: "I'd say that the butler did it...except this place doesn't have one."

In Death: At one point in Divided In Death, Eve talks to Baxter about his partner Trueheart. Baxter is letting Trueheart handle a case in which a woman was found manually strangled in Upper East Side, New York City. She had a lot of money, a miserable disposition, a huge mean streak, and a dozen heirs who are all glad to see her dead. Baxter then says, "I told him I thought the butler did it, and he just nodded, all serious, and said he'd do a probability. Christ, he's a sweet kid." Clearly, Baxter was just being funny.

There's a short story where the members of the Retired Butler's Club are boasting about how they were each suspected of murder and then cleared by clever detectives even though they were all actually guilty. Then, the club's butler murders all the members.

Discussed in a Sweet Valley Twins book when the twins try to figure out who murdered a young heiress fifty years ago. Their older brother jokes that the butler must have done it because it's always like that in the movies. He was surprisingly close. It was the chauffeur.

Mocked by the Skulduggery Pleasant short story, The Horror Writers' Halloween Ball in reference to a case solved offscreen

It's also not very interesting. The butler did it.

In Thud!, Death is reading a mystery novel to pass the time while Sam Vimes has a near-death experience, and remarks It appears that the butler did it.

Quoted and inverted: "The Murderer Seldom is The Butler", a book on social criticism in "high" German crime literature (like Hoffmann, Fontane, Noll).

Live Action Television

Every episode of Police Squad! has two titles, one of which is misleading and one of which is completely accurate. The episode about a kidnapping case is named, "The Butler Did It (A Bird in the Hand)". The butler is, in fact, the one responsible for the kidnapping.

Drebin: Is there a ransom note? Hocken: Yes. The butler found it. It was tied to this window and thrown into the rock garden.

In a televised version of one of the Hercule Poirot mysteries, Poirot and Hastings attend a murder-mystery play. The two agree to a game: Poirot will try to figure out which character is the murderer, and write it on a slip of paper which Hastings will read during the third act. Poirot's paper reads: "The butler did it." The play's butler turns out not to be the culprit, much to Poirot's annoyance, and the Belgian detective spends several minutes complaining to Hastings about bad scripting.

In an episode of Doctor Who that featured Dame Agatha Christie as a character and was itself a murder mystery, Donna Noble at one point quips that "Well, at least we know the butler didn't do it."

In an episode of Saved by the Bell, the show's characters go to a hotel in which a murder mystery is staged for the guests to try to solve. In the end, after exhausting several red herrings, it turns out that, indeed, The Butler Did It — and the episode ends with a character saying those exact words.

In a sketch on The Muppet Show, with Rowlf as Sherlock Holmes, the butler did it. However, because the butler is a Muppet monster, he then eats all the evidence, including the body and the only witness. Holmes therefore concludes that, in the absence of evidence, there was no crime at all (having briefly "deduced" that, in the absence of evidence pointing towards the butler, Watson did it).

Veronica Mars, solving the case in "An Echolls Family Christmas", muses that she's ticked because she was "this close" to being able to say The Butler Did It.

Veronica: "But no. It was the butler's son."

The Avengers episode "What the Butler Saw" involved an entire school for butlers, which turned out to be a criminal enterprise. At the end, there's an exchange along the following lines:

In a 3rd Rock from the Sun episode, the aliens attended a murder mystery dinner (thinking it was real, of course) and Tommy suggests this at one point. Harry replies "You think the butler did it? Well, that's a little far-fetched."

In one episode of Monk, the introduction implies that the butler dislikes his new employer, the son of his former, now dead employer, while delivering a drink. Instead of drinking the Manhattan, the employer pulls out a pistol and shoots the butler.

In an episode of The Golden Girls, they're participating in a murder mystery weekend. The accusations start flying for the first mystery, Rose stands up, points to the waiter and the following exchange occurs:

Rose: The butler did it!

Waiter: I'm a maitre'd.

Rose: Thank you. The maitre'd did it!

The Closer had a parody, Lampshade Hanging, and subversion all in one in the episode "The Butler Did It". The butler had confessed to a previous murder and was working on a plea bargain when he apparently committed suicide, and the detectives in charge were looking forward to actually being able to say "the butler did it". Turns out, he didn't; he was likely to expose the true killer, who killed him instead and made it look like a suicide.

Subverted in one Magnum, P.I.. Magnum is following the "killer" of a rich and annoying person. It turns out the rich man faked his own death. When he comes out of hiding the valet holds him at gunpoint until he is well scared. And them shoots him with a stream of water out of a squirt gun.

When the Police Cheif is investigating Peter's murder in Soap one of the main reasons he suspects Benson is because he's the butler (the other being because he's black).

Played with in a later episode, where it looks like the butler may actually have done it, leading to significant lampshading on the part of Castle. (It's averted at the end - he was merely stealing from his employer.)

Much, later however, in an episode in season 7, a butler, who didn't show up until the very end of the episode, actually did do it. Castle was positively gleeful as they arrested the guy. He even begged Beckett to let him announce it, and of course said the trope name verbatim.

Used in another episode where the killer turned out to be a guy who had turned up in exactly one scene beforehand. Namely, the apparent personal assistant to a near-senile political matriarch.

In an episode of Power Rangers Zeo, this trope is invoked in a murder mystery game set up by Detective Stone.

In an episode of Murdoch Mysteries the butler did not kill the original victim. However, he figured out who did it and, agreeing with the killer's motive, he then killed the witness who could have implicated the original killer.

In one episode of Bones the butler to a British noble family confesses to the Murder of the Week. Bones and Brennan suspect the butler is taking the rap for his employers, but don't have any evidence to prove otherwise. Still, Booth can't resist saying the trope name as a Quip to Black.

Ripping Yarns. Manners the butler confesses in "Murder at Moorstones Manor", citing resentment over years of servitude, but everyone else in the Big Fancy House confesses to the same murder, so they all end up killing each other. At the end the phone rings (with someone else calling in a confession) and the dying butler can't resist trying to fetch his mistress the phone as he's always done.

Plumbing the Death Star did an episode about The Force Awakens fan theories, and how they mostly involve some minor character, generally one none of the main characters' have a relationship with, secretly being the Big Bad, Snoke. The theory they find, if not the worst, the most boring is the one where the Supreme Leader of evil is actually a grown-up version of Darth Vader's butler from Rogue One who appeared for five seconds to get Vader out of his evil bubble bath once guests arrived.

"How does, like, the most evil, cunning man in the universe—now that we now know he was a butler, how does that make it better?"

Subverted twice over in the Cabin Pressure epsiode Paris. It's Birling Day, when once a year the airline flies the extremely rich and obnoxious Mr. Birling to a rugby match. Every year Carolyn (the airline's owner) provides him with a bottle of very expensive whisky, and every year Douglas (the first officer) steals it. This time Carolyn charges Martin (the captain) with stopping Douglas, and Martin enlists the help of Arthur (Carolyn's son, the steward; he's an idiot, but there's no one else). When the whisky disappears, Douglas insists that he hasn't stolen it (yet). Martin and Douglas come up with a theory as to the guilt of each of the four regular characters (Martin, Douglas, Carolyn and Arthur), in some cases more than one theory per suspect, and one for Mr. Birling himself - and one for the 'butler' figure of Philip from the airport fire crew, whom Carolyn had frisk Douglas before he got on the plane. But it wasn't Philip. The one person whom nobody suspects is Mrs. Birling (who appeared briefly near the start of the episode to see off her husband, whom she hates and who hates her)); because of this, Genre Savvy listeners will realise that she must have done it. Except that, as the writer explainshere, he carefully put her in and had nobody suspect her to trick such listeners into thinking just that - but she didn't steal it either. (Douglas stole it. Douglas always steals the whisky on Birling Day.)

Theater

Seen in Anthony Shaffer's play Whodunnit which begins as a parody of the Genteel Interbellum Setting but is revealed to be a play within a play where a real murder occurs among the actors who were the performers. The actor playing the butler turns out to be the murderer, and the Genre Savvy detective notes how he was at first misled into not suspecting that individual because the Butler is supposed to be a Red Herring, but then realized that the actor expected him to think that.

In Something's Afoot, a musical parody of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians and similar plots, the butler is killed before the first act, leading to the title song's opening line, "Something's afoot, and the butler didn't do it!"

There is a murder-mystery Affectionate Parody play out there called The Butler Did It. The show jokingly doesn't even have a butler in the cast and at the very end it is revealed that the maid is the murderer. The show also has a sequel entitled The Butler Did It Again.

There is another play called "The Butler Did It," different from above, which features a Show Within a Show expy Agatha Christie play. In said play within the play, the entire cast are a family surnamed "Butler" and their household butler, making the title true, but also useless.

In Rare's commercially unsuccessful Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Ghoulhaven's looney master Baron Von Ghoul has a few servants, but all of them aside from the also-mad Dr. Krackpot seem like generally good folk displeased with his actions. It's revealed near the end that Crivens, the butler who seemed genuinely very helpful from the start, was actually Baron Von Ghoul himself in a Latex Perfection mask. Lampshaded when the Baron himself states that he didn't think Cooper expected the butler to have done it.

Definitely played with in MySims Agents. In one part of the story, a fortunite crystal, which is able to let people see the future, is the most-sought part of Cyrus [LeBodreaux]'s estate. However, when Madame Zoe goes into the crystal room for a pre-dinner reading, you find that the crystal there has been smashed! You follow the evidence which leads you to the conclusion that Carl, the zombie butler, was the one who smashed it. However, it turns out that Zoe, a skilled hypnotist, was whispering hypnotic suggestions to him as he slept. Not only that, but it turns out that the crystal in the crystal room wasn't even the real fortunite crystal! Zoe, having foreseen that she wasn't the named inheritor of her uncle's estate, had intended to make people believe the fortunite had been destroyed so that the other potential inheritors would leave, allowing her to keep the estate anyway.

Subverted in Professor Layton and the Last Specter. The butler did it. But this time it is not the butler, the real one had been kidnapped and locked in a cellar while the mastermind took his place.

Subverted in Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney with Jean Greyearl. She is a witch who unintentionally framed Maya Fey for two murders, despite not having killed anyone herself. She believed that she killed her master Newton Belduke, who had really committed suicide moments before her attack. When accusing Greyearl, Phoenix mentions this trope by name.

Phoenix: I wasn't sure of it until now, but now I'm certain... The butler did it!

Lampshaded in the MMORPG Runescape. During the quest "Murder Mystery" you can talk to gossips about the murder of Lord Sinclair. One of the options you can say is "I think the butler did it" in which case the gossip will say something along the lines of "you've been reading too many murder mystery novels my friend". This does not affect the quest's plot in any way.

Visual Novels

Straight with a twist in Ace Attorney. The butler technically did it—but he's not actually Matt Engarde's butler, he's assassin Shelly de Killer posing as a butler. The player knows this before Phoenix does, so it's a bit of Fridge Horror when you realize Phoenix is in the same house as the kidnapped Maya, but has no idea she's only two doors away.

Webcomics

Played with in PvP by having the butler secretly playing the role of "hero". Creator Scott Kurtz's explanation of the idea was essentially "if anyone ever discovered the secret lair beneath the mansion, they would obviously suspect the millionaire playboy as the hero's secret identity. Meanwhile, the butler would have skipped town and hired his services out to the next rich employer far away, where he would start his hero gig anew."

One of the few examples that admits that it doesn't really happen is a Daffy Duck cartoon, were, after badgering the butler, Daffy notes that it's never really the butler. (It wasn't the Femme Fatale either; as it turned out, he was in the wrong house the whole time.)

In a classic Chuck Jones cartoon, "Daffy Dilly", Daffy attempts to enter the mansion of an ailing millionaire who has offered a million dollars for anyone who can give him a good laugh before he passes on. After repeated attempts to get past an implacable butler, Daffy invokes this trope to get rid of the butler, and manages to convince the butler that he did do it and flee...

In an episode with a Headless Horseman, there is also a creepy butler, who turns out to have pale hands like someone who tried to steal a jewel from a Woman. This turns out to be flour and the Horseman turns out to be a relative of the Woman attempting to steal the Jewel.

In "Go Away, Ghost Ship", the Scooby gang has to chase a ghost pirate. Their employer, Mr. Magnus, has a big, creepy-looking butler who is an obstacle into going to see him. At the end of the episode, when the pirate is unmasked, Shaggy is surprised:

Shaggy: And I thought the butler did it!

In "Nowhere to Hyde", all clues initially point to the housemaid Helga, but in the end it turns out that all those clues were planted by the real villain, who reveals himself when Shaggy and Scooby accidentally find a true clue.

At the end of the Video GameNight of a Hundred Frights, Shaggy (incorrectly) blames the spooky groundskeeper, who then appears and starts a long rant about how everyone always blames the spooky groundskeeper, including the line "Why don't you just say the butler did it?"

An episode of Mega Man involved Dr. Wily programming one of Dr. Light's new housekeeping robots to kill Megaman. After one attempt fails, Megaman utters, "I have a sneaking suspicion the butler did it". Actually it was the maid.

Subverted in the Hurricanes episode "Lord Napper of Stepney". Napper inherited his Uncle's fortune on the condition he never plays soccer ever again. It's never been stated who would be the next one to get the inheritance until Napper lost it. Until then, the only people who ever hoped to get the money were a relative and the deceased one's business partner and the two of them ever tried to rid themselves of Napper. In the end, the money went to the valet.

In Spongebob Square Pants' "The Great Patty Caper", Spongebob, searching for the key that was stolen, says, "We know you did it! The butler always commits the crime!" to the fish who works on the train that is not a butler.

The Backyardigansplays with this trope in the genre spoof episode, "Whodunnit?". It was the butler (ie. Tyrone with his hair combed) who took the jewels, but only because the lady of the house (Tasha) gave them to him. Turns out it was all a put-up job in order to liven up a dull afternoon.

One episode of the Richie Rich cartoon sees an old friend of Cadbury, who is also a butler, convicted of theft. Richie and friends have to prove he's innocent.

During the shooting rampage in Total Rickall, Rick blasts Mr. Beauregard, the supposed butler of the Smith family, because he is an alien parasite. Rick finds that funny because of the inversion of the usual trope.

An episode of The Batman in which Spellbinder brainwashes several rich people's butlers (Alfred included) to steal for him is actually titled "The Butler Did It".

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